Jailbreak of Xbox Still Deemed Illegal by Judge

By Casey Pham on 11/24/2010 12:51 PDT

Even though the government has revised the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) to make it legal for users to jailbreak their iPhones, a judge says that the fair use policy does not apply when applied to jailbreaking for Microsoft’s Xbox home gaming console. According to Wired, the 28-year-old defendant “faces three years in prison on two allegations of violating the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for financial gain.” Lawyers for the defense argued that the hardware modification, a form of jailbreaking, isn’t intended to run pirated games on the Xbox, but to allow “fair use” of copyrighted materials or for home-brewed solutions.

The judge in the case is taking a strict interpretation of the Copyright Act; Wired reports:

“But U.S. District Judge Philip shot down that argument Tuesday, noting that the DMCA makes it a crime to “circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access” to copyrighted material, even if there’s no proof that the circumvention was intended to facilitate piracy. The iPhone exemption is irrelevant, he wrote, because the Copyright Office did not extend that exemption to game consoles — just phones.